Operation Cyclone, Years Later
For all I know, God could be,
after all, favoring a mountain
boy brown with dust, his brow
calloused from the memory of men
he’s stoned to death, pissed
on the corpse of. He is a student.
He has seen, so has been
ruined; each eyeball astonished
with what has shot through
its pupil: a body will morph, in fall,
into its surrounding—even dam. Even
stone. We are what we are taught,
yes, but also what we
hope for. I hope for more than a war
that whittles us to chameleons
or refrigerated paper tags
hanging from ankles. It is so certain,
where we’ll end, yet arbitrary
are the words determining the fate
of our lives; a name, too, is a gene
and may flourish or impugn
the chromosome. Students hope
to be cradled by mothers—hope for lunch,
an hour to play ball. Students
rock back and forth, warmed by the water
of prophecy. A lie, if repeated
ad nauseam, eventually becomes
a prayer. And a cyclone is not a cyclops
although it too has an eye—
it can see. But would it testify?
If the myths are right, the student gathers,
then science is right, and the god particle
isn’t, in the end, meant to be
kind to us. Still, the student imagines God
as moving, colorful shapes. He hums
before pulling the firing pin,
singing I am a student,
I am a student, I am a student
of God, and he is right, for that
he is, and the rotten field we have scythed
of this country is his school.
